I read in the Waikato Times yesterday that fashion designer Annah Stretton has changed her brand. That wasn’t exactly how the story was portrayed, but that was its essence. Not so long ago, Stretton’s designs were picketed by animal rights activists and she’d done some other non-PC stuff with a taxidermied boar’s head. Now she’s taking a summer collection titled Stop the Slaughter to a fashion show in Australia. We are told this is inspired by her protest against the way animals are farmed.

Of course, it has become something of a fashion itself for celebs to latch on to causes, which was evidenced again by a photo of a couple of our leading actresses standing in a West Coast riverbed to give their views on its proposed damming. Don’t dam it, I say. Let’s find out where these actresses live, and build a wind farm adjacent. Wouldn’t work though, because they are possibly well enough healed to find a new neighbourhood, and then leave the visual clutter and noise for others to endure.

Never mind being a protesting vegan like Brigette Bardot and that strange woman McCartney married and divorced, there is another class of people who are re-branding themselves, and they have me worried. These are the criminal classes who re-brand for the court appearances with a make-over. The worst thugs inevitably appear in the dock clean shaven, short-back and side and sporting a collar and tie! As an habitual business tie-wearer, this is beginning to leave me isolated, so maybe its time to re-brand myself by dressing down and following the fashion.